Top national AFL-CIO official coming to Dayton to denounce TPP

Posted: 6:45 pm Friday, April 29th, 2016

By Staff Writer

A top national union official and Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley will hold a news conference in Dayton on Tuesday, May 3, to call for the U.S. Congress to reject the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal negotiated by the Obama Administration.

Supporters of the TPP say it will help American companies export their products to other countries but opponents say previous trade deals have cost American jobs and this one would too.

All that remains of the facility are employee turnstiles, now overgrown with weeds.

In the 1980s the Harrison plant employed more than 4,500 workers, according to Michael Gillis, spokesman for the union. It supplied parts to the Moraine General Motors truck plant, which also closed but has been redeveloped as a Fuyao Glass America Inc. windshield plant.

“Under the U.S. ‘free-trade’ regime, starting in the 1990s the (Harrison Radiator) plant began losing work to competitors in Brazil, Mexico and Japan where goods were produced with low-cost, exploited labor,” Gillis said.

Delphi filed for bankruptcy in the 2000s and the plant closed in 2008 and was later torn down.

“Just as past trade deals have failed working people in Dayton and across Ohio, the TPP would further stack the deck against working people here, especially working women,” Gillis said.